


Pictures at an Exhibition

by radialarch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, POV Outsider, Steve Rogers's Sadness Errands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5751595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <img/>
</p><p>
  <span class="small">HOME » EXHIBITIONS  » SEARCH » CURRENT</span>
</p><p><strong>Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage</strong><br/>April 17, 2014 — Indefinitely<br/>Air and Space Museum</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pictures at an Exhibition

**Author's Note:**

> So I was watching CATWS, and I made [this post](http://radialarch.tumblr.com/post/137465362136), and then it grew feelings. You know how it goes.
> 
> Look. Steve Rogers's life is just very sad.

There aren’t many pictures of Steve Rogers before the serum. Makes it easy for Karen to pick one, from the batch the Army had sent over. In it, Rogers is frowning off into the distance, dog tags hanging around his neck. She wonders if he even knew he was being photographed.

It’d be nicer without the tags, she thinks. Draw a contrast between the _before_  and _after_. Portrait of the boy before the war.

She can only work with what she’s got, though, so she moves on to the after.

There are the standard Army photos, of course: stills cut from propaganda film reels, posed pictures of the man in uniform. They’re the pictures you see in history books. They’re not  _bad_ , per se, but they’re familiar. Does she want familiar? Is that what the exhibit’s about?

She makes her way through the next batch, which are mostly from the USO tour. When the Smithsonian had sent out a call for pictures of Captain America, they’d gotten back a wave of mail. Men and women digging up their photo albums, to find a moment in time when they’d met Captain America. Some of them had written letters, too, and none of that would go in the exhibit but Karen had read them all, because — well, someone should listen.

The third source of photos is from the Stark estate. No one had even known Howard Stark had all these pictures until Stark Jr. sent them over with a scribbled note: _look, maybe someone should get some use out of these – TS_

These pictures are definitely different. Stark had been an engineer, first and foremost, and quite a few of them have technical notes in the margins. “inc. C-poly.” “adh. to surface of Vi?”

And they have Cap with weapons. Cap with a bruise on one cheek and a half-healed gunshot wound on his torso. A freshly stitched gash, with a ruler laid across his ribs for scale.

Everyone knows Cap as a hero, Karen thinks, but nobody actually thinks about the process. Fighting. Getting hurt. The dirt and blood and the rest of it.

Should she make people think about that? Is _that_  what the exhibit’s about?

There are older pictures at the bottom of the box. Howard must’ve been still working on Vita-Rays. There’s a shot of Rogers, still small, his ribs visible, against the machine. Howard’s marked off a scale along the side, with annotations on predicted growth.

Then she finds it. The picture must’ve been taken – god, minutes after he stepped out of the machine. There’s a sheen of sweat over his torso, and he looks – a little unsure, but pleased. 

This is it, she thinks. The birth of Captain America. It’s the man, about to grow into a legend. Still unformed, but with almost limitless potential. It’s not about what the serum did to him; what’s important is what he would do with it, after.

And, she has to admit: the picture’s not bad on the eyes, either.

——

Charlie calls the day after she submits her picks. “Karen,” he says when she picks up the phone. “You can’t use that picture.”

“Charlie, gimme a break,” Karen says, pretending innocence, “there are only like three pictures of small Rogers in existence, that’s the best I could do.”

“Karen!” Charlie says. "You know the one I mean. Look, _I_  don’t mind if the exhibit ends up looking like soft-core Captain America pornography, but the directors do!”

“Okay, I know,” she admits. “But it works! Tell ‘em, oh, it’s about possibilities. Before he wasn’t anything, but he could _be_  anything. It’s, you know, thematically consistent.”

There’s a suspicious silence over the line. “I could sell that,” he says slowly. “But I absolutely refuse to believe that’s the whole reason why you picked it.”

Karen says, with absolute honesty, “It’s at least 50% of the reason.”

“Someone’s gonna spend hours working on that display and staring at Cap’s naked torso,” Charlie mutters. “God help ‘em.”

——

One of the worst things about having worked on the Captain America exhibit is that every friend who comes into town wants her to take them there. Sure, Cap’s kind of pretty, but there’s only so many times you can stare at the same picture before you go crazy.

“Oh, come on,” Liz says, pouting. “You said there’s a huge panel of Bucky Barnes’s face.”

“You can Google it!” Karen protests half-heartedly, but mentally prepares herself to spend another afternoon in the Smithsonian.

Liz has had a crush on Bucky Barnes since she was six years old, so Karen leaves her to spend some quality time with the display in question and takes a look around. There’s the display comparing Cap pre- and post-serum. She’s gotta admit she still has a soft spot for that one.

In front of her, a dude with a baseball cap pulled over his head does a double take at the pictures. Karen lets herself grin, glances at his face, and freezes.

When Liz comes to find her, she’s still staring at the guy.

“Didn’t you say there was a film?” Liz says. “One where they all look really happy?”

“Don’t look now,” Karen says, low. “But that guy in the navy jacket and the hat. Do you think he looks like —”

Liz lets her gaze drift sideways. “Oh my god,” she says. “ _That’s Captain America_.”

“What’s Captain America _doing here_ ,” Karen says, half-hysterical. “Doesn’t he already know everything about his life?”

“Maybe he wants a different perspective,” Liz says. “Look, he’s going into the film room. Let’s go.”

“We can’t _follow him_ ,” Karen says. “Isn’t that like, stalking? We can’t stalk Captain America!”

“No, it’s not stalking, shut up!” Liz says, tugging at her arm. “I totally want to see the film! We’re just…going to do it at the same time as Captain America. Coincidentally. Completely unplanned.”

“You’re awful,” Karen says, “the police are definitely gonna arrest you,” and lets herself be pulled through the door.

The film in the room is on a loop. It’s playing some of the Army footage at the moment, black and white shots of the Howling Commandos. They lean against the wall at the back, trying to be unobtrusive.

On the screen, Captain America is laughing. Barnes claps him on the shoulder, says something none of them can hear, and bursts into laughter himself. Cap grins even harder. He looks so happy it almost looks like he’s glowing.

In front of them, Captain America puts his face in his hands. He’s sitting curled up, with his elbows on his knees, and he looks smaller than she’d ever imagined.

They leave quietly.

“Poor guy,” Liz says.

“I feel kind of bad,” Karen admits. “The exhibit was supposed to be like, Learn all this cool shit about Captain America! I didn’t know it would make him _sad_.”

“I don’t think it’s the exhibit’s fault,” Liz says. “All his friends are like, dead, right? This is probably the only way he gets to see them.”

Karen thinks about that for a moment. “Okay, I think that actually makes me feel worse.”

"Man,” Liz says, with finality. “The guy’s life really sucks.”

——

The Winter Soldier congressional hearings get a lot of coverage on the news, but this is the thing Karen remembers most clearly: the way Captain America had escorted Bucky Barnes out of the Capitol, an arm around Barnes’s shoulder, and the way Barnes had looked up at him, tired — but happy. She could almost believe she was back in the dark room of the Smithsonian, watching that moment of time play on forever.


End file.
